The Passion of Saint Ebola-chan
by roisaber
Summary: Behold, a new Unclean One has been born! Praise her, and be filled with the life-giving light of mankind's glorious savior, Papa Nurgle.
1. Infection

With a great effort, she slowly opened her rheumy eyes and took in the scene around her. Every part of her body felt like raw fire and the fever burning in her head was so intense that she couldn't even remember her own name. The only memories she could evoke were nightmarish fever dreams of some terrible catastrophe – the screaming bodies of the infected; the skies of her homeworld scarred and blackened; and the stench, that terrible stench of putrescent flesh. She had no idea where she was, only that she was lying on something soft and terrible. Her pupils struggled to focus through an anterior chamber half-filled with blood.

To her left was the hospital where she'd been employed as a trainee nurse in the Order Hospitaller, but the building was now a half-collapsed ruin partly burned and marred by a galaxy of bolter holes. To her right was the capital's biggest park. So recently the park had been full beautiful trees and well-manicured flower gardens, but now the things growing there were alien and frightening. With a sudden jolt of animal terror, she realized that she was lying on human bodies, just one more corpse in a decaying pile that stood several stories high. There were loud noises coming from below; corpses were still being added to the grim mound by black-robed devils that could only be the denizens of Chaos. The stench was beyond belief. Every time she thought it had reached its crescendo, some new pocket of air carrying even ghastlier odors invaded her nose and clawed at her brain. The woman turned over, trying and failing to get up off of her belly. It was no use. She gagged on a fresh new stench and then vomited. Hot, bloody tar erupted from her stomach, and splashed off the corpse she was lying on and back onto her face and shredded uniform.

"Hey, one of them's alive!" a black-robed cultist called from the bottom of the pile.

"Grab her!" another replied. "She must be blessed by Papa Nurgle to have survived all that!"

She didn't even have the strength to protest. The fever raging in her head left her stupid and disoriented, and she couldn't even form words to describe her misery. She couldn't think, she'd been reduced to something less than human. All her senses were an open wound of heat and agony and stench. She heard the pair of cultists make their way up the pile but she could only whimper; she was as helpless and afraid as a newborn lamb. Rough arms grabbed her and slung her over their shoulders, and she finally slid back into the pitiless mercy of unconsciousness.

She drifted in and out of consciousness for a long time, and it was impossible to tell which nightmare was the real world and which was a keening dream spun by her infected brain. Occasionally she would wake up for long enough to vomit, and bloody puke erupted from her belly and splashed all over her body and her bed. She had no control over her bowels, and voided them all over herself and the rough sheets she was laying on experiencing neither shame nor relief. Bile filled her eyeballs and permanently stained her irises yellow. She was in Hell. No, it was a place worse than Hell. Occasionally a pockmarked and disfigured cultist would enter her room and force brackish, sugary fluid down her throat. Another found such humor in her miserable condition that he pissed all over her, which to her horror managed to leave her marginally cleaner but humiliated beyond words. After what seemed like a thousand years, she finally woke up strong enough to sit up in bed. For awhile she just sat and gulped shallow breaths. Her body was covered in dried piss; dried vomit; dried shit; dried blood.

A male cultist entered, wearing a black robe that revealed only his disease-mutilated face. He didn't look much older than thirty, and might have been handsome before his conversion to Chaos.

"Well, well, well, my little angel of Nurgle. You pulled through after all."

She coughed and immediately regretted it.

"Where am I?" she rasped. "_Who_ am I?"

The cultist proudly answered, "You're on the newly anointed Chaos world of Ulkair's Reach. As for _who_ you are, well; that's a question you're going to have to answer for yourself, and quickly. You must've had Papa's blessing to endure an Initiation like that, but you'll be executed just the same if you don't adjust to your new life quick. As for _me_, my name's Laktheer, and I'll do whatever I can to turn you into a fine servant of Papa Nurgle."

"But I'm…" Everything was so cloudy. "I'm Order Hospitaller. You're an evil heretic."

"Not anymore. It's time for you to discover the joys our Father bequeaths on his loyal followers. Can you stand?"

She slowly rotated in bed, and eased her feet onto the floor. The plasteel was buckled in places, but she still recognized what remained of the hospital. An ikon to the God-Emperor hung over her bed but someone had profaned it with streaks of bloody shit. The floor felt cold on her bare feet.

"Let's get you cleaned up," the cultist advised. "Papa Nurgle has tested you and found you worthy; the torment is over and your new life is about to begin."

She stood, wobbled, and had to steady herself against the bed.

"Who am I?"

"You can't remember your name? Well, we have to call you something… let's see… how about just Ebola-chan for now?"

"Ebola… chan?" It didn't sound right, but it didn't sound wrong, either. "Okay. I'll be Ebola-chan. Who… who are _you_?"

"My name is Laktheer. I've been assigned to be your Master, and I'm responsible for training you and bringing you up to speed as a loyal agent of holy Chaos, tasked with undoing the rotten Order that prevents sentient beings from ever knowing true joy."

Ebola-chan paused to digest this. "Oh."

The cultist smiled, revealing a mouthful of dying, jagged teeth. "Okay Ebola-chan, follow me and we'll go get you cleaned up."

She stepped behind him, taking one careful, measured step after another. Ebola-chan still felt hot, but it was clear that the fever was broken and that she was on the road to recovery. She was astonished by the transformation in the hospital. She'd worked there every day for almost a year, training to become a full-fledged member of the Order. Now she barely recognized the place. Emblems of Chaos were spray-painted over signs exhorting frequent hand washing and plaques covered with hymns of healing. There were bolter holes everywhere. In some places, the floor above had caved in, and twisted girders hung above the corridor as if waiting to fall on their heads. Few patients remained and most of those appeared to be Chaos cultists – Ebola-chan tried not to speculate what had happened to her former patients, but the pile outside was still there and still stinking up the place.

Laktheer led her into the staff bathroom. The entire west wall of the hospital had collapsed and allowed her to see the charred ruins of her homeworld's capital, reaching into the distance broken and blackened and resembling the jagged teeth in Laktheer's mouth. Ebola-chan was astonished to discover that she had no sympathy for her ruined homeworld. Though the planet had fallen to irredeemable wickedness, the emotional torment she knew she should be experiencing just wasn't there. Instead, Ebola-chan just felt tired, hungry, and, truth be told –

Curious.

Laktheer cleared his throat.

"What?" she asked.

"Go ahead and get yourself cleaned up," Laktheer advised, motioning to one of the shower stalls. "I'm going to present you to the congregation shortly."

There was a pregnant pause. Ebola-chan looked at Laktheer, and Laktheer looked back at Ebola-chan.

"Well, are you just going to stand there all day?" Ebola-chan demanded.

Laktheer retorted, "Everyone is going to see you naked as part of the ceremony anyway."

"You can still give a girl a break."

Laktheer took the hint and left the staff bathroom, letting the door swing closed behind him. Ebola-chan shrugged off the damaged and profaned remains of her nurse's outfit and stepped into the shower. She was greeted by a harsh jet of tepid water which immediately turned brown and ran in rivulets down her legs. She'd seen a lot of icky shit in her year learning medicine with the Order Hospitaller, but that had been okay because it was happening to someone else. It'd never occurred to her that she might find herself equally helpless and sick someday.

"Eugh, _sooo_ gross," she muttered.

From the floor's security room, Laktheer and his former pupil, Tosh, watched her bathe on a hot wired monitor.

"Master, there's not a blemish on her," Tosh murmured.

"Aye, lad," Laktheer replied, deep in thought. "I've never seen anything like it in all my days."

It was true. Every Nurgle cultist resembled some kind of leprous calamity, but Ebola-chan's skin was as smooth and pure as porcelain. They watched her struggle to work the blood and vomit and dried shit out of her long hair. Inch by inch, she slowly freed the flowing strands from the wretched glue expelled from her own disease-ravaged insides. It was slow work, and even the sight of a naked, beautiful woman, just barely an adult, wasn't enough to quell their growing impatience as minutes stretched into an hour.

As for Ebola-chan, she spent the shower struggling with a comb and thinking hard. Her memory was slowly returning, but it was coming back profoundly wrong. Somehow the emotional content of her memories had been boiled away by the long fever. While she could remember facts from her childhood, the sinews of feeling that bound those facts together into a life story were severed. She could remember her father's face as he handed her a popsicle at a travelling fair, but not her elation; not her admiration for him; not the love. She could remember her first kiss behind the bleachers of her middle school but not the thundering in her heart that prompted it. Her mother's untimely death now meant nothing to her. It was as though it had all happened to someone else. She ran into a particularly hard clump of dried shit in her hair and it took her five minutes to disentangle it.

"Ow! Geeze, ow, ow, ow, ow!" she grumbled, dragging the comb through her hair and tugging mercilessly on her own scalp.

She lathered her body from head to toe, rinsed off, and then did it again. She was astonished to discover a pair of hard, unfamiliar nubs growing just beneath her shoulders. She was at a loss for what they could possibly be but she soon decided it was a mystery for another day. She scrubbed her skin pink under the lukewarm jets. Eventually, the water ran clean and Ebola-chan was satisfied. She rinsed off the last of the lather and stepped out of the shower, barefoot onto the stained tile floor. Normally, her fastidiousness would never have allowed her to step out onto the hospital floor with bare feet, largely because she was a nurse and she _knew_ where it had been. But now it didn't bother her at all. She felt as though she had been touched by something, something hot and radiant and divine. She felt invincible.

Laktheer had thoughtfully left her a set of fresh black robes, and she shrugged them over her shoulders and looked at herself in the mirror. Of course, her long hair was a hopeless mess, and a few minutes brutalizing it with her comb proved that it was determined to damn well stay that way. As though in a dream, Ebola-chan walked to her locker and opened the door. A poster of a boy-band greeted her, and with an inexplicable surge of glee, she tore it down and threw it in a nearby trash can. She rifled through her belongings as if in a dream, astonished by the person she'd been oh-so recently. She finally found what she was looking for, and she dabbed a drop of perfume on her neck, on her wrists, and on her thighs. He hadn't left her any underwear, but the baggy black robe covered her almost from head to toe, exposing only her face to the world. She left the hood down.

Finally she stepped out into the hallway, where Laktheer and Tosh innocently awaited her.

"How was your shower?" Laktheer asked.

Ebola-chan nodded once. "Good. I feel clean for like, the first time in my life."

Tosh was still awestruck.

"You're so beautiful," he said, drawing a glare from Laktheer.

Ebola-chan blushed ferociously. "Um, thanks, Mister…?"

"I'm Tosh," he replied, offering her a pox-scarred hand.

She shook it, and the trio set down the corridor with Laktheer in the lead.

Laktheer asked, "Hey, Ebola-chan, I've been meaning to ask you something. I thought your hair was just dyed but it isn't, is it? It's really pink?"

"Yeah," Ebola-chan replied with a laugh. "My parents wanted me to be 'special,' so when I was still in the womb they had my genes spliced with jellyfish DNA to get the unique color. To tell you the truth, I've had a love-hate relationship with my hair my entire life. Standing out isn't always a good thing, especially on an Imperium world."

She paused as they passed a gaping wound in the hospital's façade, exposing the ruins of the capital stretching into the middle distance.

"Well… former Imperium world, huh?" she asked tentatively.

Laktheer nodded. "The Imps have been driven off, and a small warp storm located nearby would make a reconquest difficult. Unless this planet has some strategic resource or cultural value we don't know about, I don't see them coming back."

Ebola-chan continued to stare at the ruins, and was astonished to feel a tear crawl down her cheek.

"So, I'm… alone?"

Laktheer turned to face her, and smiled. "No. You're not alone. You have us now."

Ebola-chan laughed and then blushed as a little bubble of snot burst inside her nose.

"Come on. Let's take you to meet the congregation."

The trio exited the hospital and piled into a damaged aircar in the facility's parking lot. Laktheer took the driver's seat, and guided them towards the nearby Palladium Industries Coliseum. Ebola-chan stared out of the window as they drove over broken concrete and shredded plasteel. It was hard to recognize landmarks among the collapsed apartment buildings and piles of rubble, but she'd occasionally see a tower or a park that reminded her of the life she'd led before the sudden, unstoppable Chaos blitzkrieg. While she intellectually expected to feel dismayed or terrified, the ruins didn't tug on her heartstrings at all. She watched sedately as they passed over the completely leveled remains of what had once been a boarding preschool. Instead of dismay, all she felt was a growing sense of anticipation as they approached the stadium.

"Wow, there's so many people!" Ebola-chan announced as they flew over the parking lot. Then she remembered something that Laktheer had said earlier. "Wait, they're _all_ going to see me naked!?"

"It's a really big ceremony. You'll just be one face alongside many, I promise."

The aircar landed, and the three shuffled out of the vehicle. Tosh bailed, explaining that the tutor and the pupil were to go on stage as a pair, so Laktheer and Ebola-chan got in the line with the other recruits. All of them were scarred and many seemed half-dead, making her feel a little out of place. Her fever was all but gone now and in fact she felt better than ever. She listened half-heartedly while Laktheer explained the ceremony to her.

"…and present yourself to the Oracle, a psyker, and he'll ask you if you're willing to renounce the – disease be upon him – God-Emperor of mankind, and devote your life to Grandfather Nurgle."

"Renounce the God-Emperor?" Ebola-chan asked, a faint bell ringing in the back of her head.

Of course. The God-Emperor. Sworn enemy of Chaos and savior of mankind. Everyone knew that you never, ever, ever renounced the Emperor; it was better to be tortured for a thousand years by a Ruinous Power than to renounce the greatest man to ever live. The Warp could corrupt your body and even your mind, but faith was the one thing that could never be corrupted. Something felt so _wrong_ here, but what was it? Laktheer looked at her with genuine concern in his eyes, throwing her into even greater confusion. He was supposed to be the wicked, mindless spawn of tainted powers. Instead, he was a real person who seemed to genuinely care for her.

"As your new Master, I'll give you your first lesson," Laktheer quietly explained as they were jostled by the crowd of new devotees waiting to have their turn in the stadium. "The God-Emperor is not who his followers claim him to be. He keeps mankind locked away in a prison of ignorance and hostility, but now he's become trapped in his own machinations. Look around you now, and tell me that the sight you see is evil."

Ebola-chan looked. Smoke from fires that were still burning lazily drifted up from the surface and joined the smoke clouding the ash-choked sky. Nurgle initiates and their masters milled around, some talking, some arguing, some laughing, and some even sharing a kiss. Air traffic picked up overhead, and dropships sedately rose into and fell from the overcast sky, off on their own unknowable errands. There were even Nurgle-tainted children playing hopscotch, red rover, and other children's games, laughing and annoying nearby adults. Her world was a Nurgle world now, but it was still a _world_.

"I know I _should_ see it as evil," Ebola-chan slowly replied. "But for some reason, I don't."

"Good. I'd hate to see so much blessing get wasted."

The pair watched the ongoing ceremony on an outdoor monitor as they waited for their turn to enter. The procedure seemed simple enough; a naked devotee was led onto the central dais by the Nurgle cultist chosen to be his or her master; a hulking Death Guard Space Marine asked the devotee if they were willing to renounce the God-Emperor and devote their lives to the worship of Nurgle, and then on assent a decrepit psyker referred to as the Oracle scried the devotee's destiny and announced a piece of it to the cheering crowd. Occasionally an Initiate would get cold feet and refuse to renounce the Emperor, and those were immediately and summarily dispatched by the Death Guard Marine. The Initiates who agreed were fêted off the dais by a cheering crowd. Ebola-chan couldn't help but notice that she was the only one who'd survived the Initiation untouched by pox.

The line ground forward and Ebola-chan soon went from trepidation to just wanting to get it over with. She pondered whether she should choose death above dishonor, but she couldn't seem to summon any emotional attachment to her former life. Why should she _die_ for a set of beliefs that no longer meant anything to her? It made no sense.

"Are you nervous?" Laktheer asked.

Ebola-chan admitted, "A little."

"You'll do wonderfully, I just know it."

Finally, after an entire other hour in line, it was her turn. Ebola-chan took a deep breath, and, selflessly encouraged by Laktheer, stripped off her black robes. A nearby male cultist couldn't help but note with a little surprise that even the girl's thin stripe of pubic hair was pink. Laktheer led her out on the dais and she stared up into the crowd. The shouting and jeering was cut short, replaced by astonished murmurs. Ebola-chan could catch half a sentence here and there.

"…so beautiful!"

"…believe it, she looks like an angel. Not a single mark on her…"

"Who _is_ she?"

Laktheer stood her in front of the Dead Guard Marine, and she stared up at him. He towered over her, fully twice her height and then some, and his voice came out so deep and guttural that she quickly squeezed her legs shut to prevent her bladder from involuntarily evacuating in front of the whispering crowd.

"You will renounce the God-Emperor, and devote your life to Nurgle," the Marine ordered.

Ebola-chan's voice came out as a squeak.

"I renounce the God-Emperor, and I devote my life to Nurgle," she nervously chirped.

As she walked to the Oracle the stadium was so quiet you could almost hear the roar of air traffic passing overhead. Ebola-chan felt thousands of eyes probing every inch of her exposed body, and her skin was almost glowing from the fire of her blush. The Oracle's blind, milky eyes stared up at her, seeing Powers-only-know what swirling around her in the Warp. The Oracle was exhausted from his long day of labor, but when he noticed Ebola-chan, he stood up straighter and took sharp notice. He gazed into her while deep in trance, and then his eyes started to vibrate wildly, staring at nothing in every direction.

Finally the Oracle spoke, stuttering and shaking. Everyone in the stadium sidled to the edge of their seats.

"B-b-b-b-by orders of P-p-p-pa Nurgle…"

The Oracle struggled to catch his breath through a quaking throat.

"Out with it!" someone in the crowd shrieked.

"H-h-his D-d-d-d-ivine Majesty says…"

The tension was unbearable. In all his years, Laktheer had never seen the Oracle so shaken. The crowd was going silently insane, and men and women alike tore clumps of hair out of their scalps, moved to religious ecstasy by the agony of anticipation.

"Nurgle says…"

"He says…"

"His Uttermost Holiness says, 'Behold, f-f-f-f-for you are in the p-p-p-p-presence of the new Daemon Princess of Ulkair's Reach, Sultana Ebola-Chan."

The crowd erupted. Screams of joy competed with screams of rage and betrayal to see which could make a louder din. Several members of the crowd drew bolters and started firing, some into the air in celebration, and others at the dais itself. One bolt pinged off the Death Guard's armor, and he turned to face the rest of the stadium with murder in his eyes.

"Ebola-chan!" Laktheer shouted over the deafening noise. "Come on, let's get out of here!"

He quickly hurried her off the dais and into the bowels of the stadium, while Death Guard Marines piledrove the crowd towards the stadium exits. It was unheard of for an Initiate not five minutes accepted into the family of Nurgle to be made a Daemon Sultan, and yet there could be no doubt that the Oracle was expressing Nurgle's will. The pair ran through the stadium doors and out of the emergency exit, ignoring the incredulous stares of the Masters and their celebratory Initiates. Without letting Ebola-chan pause for breath the pair ran to the nearest aircar, which Laktheer hot wired with the practiced ease of an expert. Ebola-chan jumped into the passenger seat, and she struggled to catch her breath while covering her small breasts with her hands.

"_What the Hell just happened_?" she demanded.

"I don't know!" Laktheer admitted, easing the aircar into the sky and dodging stray rounds of bolter fire. "Let's lie low at the hospital until the Death Guard can get this under control!"

News of Ebola-chan's sudden and totally unexpected ascension was obviously spreading fast. Several tiny rockets thrust their way into the skies and when they reached their apogee they exploded with a blossom of color. Looking out of the window, she could also see gangs of furious Nurgle cultists squaring off against Death Guard Marines, who didn't hesitate to crack their skulls at the first sign of trouble. The problem was obvious. Who the Hell was this girl, and where had she come from? What gave her the right to rule the entire world?

"It'll blow over soon," Laktheer promised. "People will recover their wits; we just better stay out of sight for a day or two."

Ebola-chan looked back at Laktheer, eyes as wide as saucers.

"I'm really the ruler of this whole planet now?"

Laktheer looked back at her and nodded. Suddenly, he started laughing.

"What?" she demanded, moving her hands to try to cover up as much teenaged boob as possible.

"You may be the _political_ leader of this planet now, but Nurgle-Heika didn't say a damn thing about you being immediately promoted to Master. You know what that means? It means that doesn't change a thing between us!" he laughed uproariously. "You're still my Initiate, and you've still got to listen to me and do as I say!"

"Sheesh," Ebola-chan replied, turning away from him to gaze out of the aircar's window.

Laktheer fiddled with the aircar's comm.

"Hello, control? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Look, just listen already! My name is Laktheer, and I have Sultana Ebola-chan aboard. I need air cover and a company of Death Guard around the Central Hospital ASAP. No, I'm not _lying_. Fuck off, go get your C.O., this is obviously above your pay grade!"

After another few minutes of cursing, threats, and dubious insinuations as to the parentage of air traffic control's mother, a pair of gunships soon fell into position around the aircar as it steamed towards the badly shelled Central Hospital. The threats that had been levied against Laktheer should he be lying caused even his experienced eyes to widen, but there was no doubt about it; Ebola-chan, the nobody from nowhere, was now the inviolate Sultana of Ulkair's Reach. Finally they reached the parking lot and Laktheer put down the vehicle, only to come face to face with a contingent of angry-looking Death Guard. Ebola-chan stepped out of the vehicle and hid behind Laktheer.

The Captain glanced at the male cultist and snorted. "It's well for you that you weren't lying."

Then he remembered himself, and he and the other Death Marines all took a knee and looked downward, facing Ebola-chan. She held tightly to Laktheer and the scene stretched on into awkwardness.

"Uh," Ebola-chan whispered to Laktheer, tickling his ear with her warm breath. "What do I do?"

"Uh, probably say, 'Arise, faithful!' or something like that," Laktheer suggested lamely.

"Okay. Arise, faithful!" she called, still hiding behind her mentor.

The Marines took that as close enough, and they stood.

"Please forgive my impertinence, Lady Sultana," the Captain said. "I am Captain Marcion Adams of Chapter VI, and I will accept any punishment you deem appropriate."

"Uh, I don't think any punishment is necessary, Mister Captain," Ebola-chan mumbled nervously. "You're… dismissed?"

"What are your orders?"

"Just keep any of those nutjobs from getting into the hospital," Laktheer snapped. "This is going to be our base of operations for the time being."

"Aye sir!"

Laktheer led Ebola-chan into the hospital. There were still some cultists milling around, all staring slack-jawed at their new – and still naked – Sultana.

Ebola-chan's patience finally snapped.

"Do you think I could get some _clothes_?" she demanded.

"You!" Laktheer announced, pointing to another cultist at random. "A robe for Her Majesty."

Ebola-chan interjected, "Wait! Laktheer, is the black robe truly _necessary_?"

Laktheer shrugged and scratched his itching nose.

"It's traditional for acolytes, but nothing says it's _required_. Why, what did you have in mind?"

Ebola-chan bit her lip and thought quickly. Every minute she spent nude was another strike against her modesty, but her street clothes were probably ruined and anyway it was hard to tell what felt right anymore. Finally she got an idea.

"Go get me a Nurse's uniform, size zero. _What? _I'm petite, okay?" she announced with a glower.

The cultist scurried off and Ebola-chan hid herself in a private room until he came back with clothing. He dropped it on the floor outside her door in a pile, knocked on the door, and fled. She grabbed it and slammed the door, trying to avoid the eyes prying open every crevasse of her nude body. Well, it turned out that the cultist had done alright, for a man. The uniform was size zero just as she'd requested, but he'd forgotten a bra. Well – and this was something she still hated to admit to herself – it's not as if she really needed one anyway. The cultist _had _provided her with an unnecessary nurse's cap, which caused her to laugh out loud for reasons that would be impossible to explain. Bemused, she sidled into the form-fitting white outfit, and pulled a pair of thin black panties up over her crotch, and went to admire herself in the bedrooms generous mirror.

Beautiful. They were right, she really was beautiful. Hell, she'd go gay for that; _nobody_ is that straight. She reached up and touched the locks of her pink hair, which had bundled itself into two long strands, one on each side of her head. The strands ended in a funny little shape she couldn't quite recognize, and she attacked the weird tangles with a comb pilfered from a drawer in the bathroom. No dice. No matter how much attention she gave to trying to straighten the curly ends, they just twisted themselves back into the weird yet faintly recognizable curl. When she finally felt like a semi-dignified human being, Ebola-chan opened the door and found herself face to face with Laktheer.

"It's time for dinner and a lesson," he announced.

"I'm too tired for a lesson," Ebola-chan snarled in response.

"Look at you, you're hangry and you don't even know it," Laktheer replied with an unoffended smile. "Follow me and we'll get you some dinner; I promise you'll feel better in no time."

Ebola-chan was still irritated but she followed him anyway. The hospital didn't have any electricity except that brought by battery power, but now that the Sultana had chosen it as her temporary HQ, teams of Dark Mechanicus were working hard to coax the small reactor that powered the facility back to life. Laktheer led her outside to a luxury yacht teeming with cultists and various functionaries. The Death Guard formed a perimeter around the hospital, and occasionally clashed with loosely organized gangs of protestors still furious at Ebola-chan's sudden and inexplicable rise to power.

They pair boarded the yacht. In all honesty, it was the single nicest place either of them had ever seen. Every surface that wasn't polished marble was wood from the rare Terran oak tree, and everything glittered with chrome and bright but accommodating lighting. Cultists scurried to and fro, determined to make everything perfect for their Sultana, and she didn't have the heart to tell them that she'd be just as happy with an energy bar and a bottle of water. An uncorrupted butler with a face like a hundred yard stare led them to the ship's ample dining room. They sat next to one another at the end of a long table, both of them feeling a bit foolish as silent waiters brought them appetizers.

"I'm… really the Sultana now, aren't I? It's so much to take in!" Ebola-chan admitted.

"Aye, lass. I must confess that I'm as surprised as anyone else. I thought you might be special, but all this?" Laktheer took a big bite of something made with fresh crab. "Heavenly!"

A waiter brought them a bottle of wine from Baraque Lafite Rothschild, which Ebola-chan knew to cost more than an economy aircar. He poured a glass for each of them and Ebola-chan took a big sip of the thin, crimson liquid. She made a face.

"Sweet Nurgle!" she exclaimed.

Laktheer took a sip as well. They both looked at each other.

"This is…" Laktheer couldn't hold back and he laughed out loud. "This is _terrible_!"

"It so is!" Ebola-chan agreed with a grin.

Laktheer took the bottle to one of the dining room's open window and chucked it out onto the asphalt below. Ebola-chan applauded politely. Soon, they harangued the waiter into bringing them a few bottles of Rogue Trader Joe's Two Credit Chuck and drank it with gusto.

The waiters brought them dish after dish, and Ebola-chan and Laktheer ate until their stomachs were full to bursting. The pair's glasses were refilled so silently that Ebola-chan was totally smashed before she knew what'd happened to her.

"Wai-wai-wait, so what was your _stupid_ lesson?" Ebola-chan demanded.

Laktheer hiccupped. "Lesson?"

"You know, you said we would eat and then lessons and stuff."

"I did? Of course I did. _This_ is the lesson," Laktheer announced grandly, gesturing to the entire dining cabin with his arm and almost knocking over his wine glass.

Ebola-chan's cheeks were ruddy with wine. "Oh yeah, and what lesson is that?"

"All this _is_ the lesson!" Laktheer insisted.

"I think you're full of shit."

"You can't talk to me that way," Laktheer said, poking her in the chest. "I'm your Master."

"Oh yeah? I'm the Sultana!"

"Master!"

"Sultana!"

"Master!"

"Sultana!"

The two stared at one another, taking quick, shallow breaths that smelled like wine. Ebola-chan's perfect pink lips were stained with crimson.

Even a high framerate camera couldn't answer the question of who leaned in first. Laktheer and Ebola-chan's lips met, at first gently, and then roughly as the two pressed into one another. Ebola-chan leaned into Laktheer's surprisingly sturdy chest, and he reached down to ruffle one of the tangles in her hair. Ebola-chan recovered her senses first and she quickly drew away, much to Laktheer's dismay.

"Yersh, I can't believe I did that," she slurred uneasily.

Laktheer could only stare awkwardly into his food.

Ebola-chan suddenly stood up, knocking over her chair and almost toppling a waiter. She stared at Laktheer blearily.

"I'm goingth to beth," she announced. "Huwher'th the bedthroom on thith tub?"

Laktheer sighed and stood, a little unsteady himself.

"We'll find it," he promised.

The pair stumbled through the ship, knocking down potted plants and sending cultists scurrying for cover. Finally they found the ample captain's quarters situated just below the bridge, and Ebola-chan keyed the lock to her biometrics and leaned against the door frame warily, looking back at Laktheer. He knew better than to push his luck.

"Rest up," Laktheer advised with a faint smile tugging at the sides of his mouth. "Tomorrow is going to be a big day."

[AUTHOR:] Thanks for reading! While this works as a one-shot, I'll consider expanding it into a novella if I get a positive response from you, the reader. That means if you want to read more you'd better say so!

**Chapter 2 is now up**


	2. Mutagen

Ebola-chan woke, stretched, and yawned loudly. It took her a moment to remember where she was and everything that'd happened to her. She blinked her yellow eyes until they came into focus and revealed her new bedroom, the Captain's stateroom of a captured luxury yacht. It was still a marvel to her. Never in a thousand years of working as a nurse with the Order Hopstailler could she ever have afforded anything like it. What's more, she obviously had personal room service as well. The bedroom had been cleaned and straightened. There was a basket of fresh fruit waiting on a bedside table and her nurse's outfit from the day before had been laundered and pressed by some enterprising functionary during the night. Ebola-chan climbed out of bed and into the uniform, rummaging around in the spacious walk-in closet for appropriate underwear. No luck – the closet and drawers were entirely empty. She put on her freshly cleaned panties from the previous day instead. She'd have to go shopping soon.

An appetizing apple gleamed warmly in the light streaming through the windows of her bedroom. Ebola-chan absently grabbed it and took a bite. It was one of the best tasting apples she'd ever had; it was perfectly crunchy without being underripe; the flavor was sweet and fresh without being cloying; and the skin didn't have a single blemish on it anywhere. She ate it down to the core and then dropped the remains on the floor with a grin of self-realization. As Sultana of Ulkair's Reach, it was safe to say she'd never have to worry about picking up after herself again.

Someone pounded on her stateroom door, and she just sat on the edge of her bed and let them knock for a few minutes, reveling in her liberty. She might have left her visitor at her doorstep all day, but the ship's telescreen was picking up nothing but static or educational programming from the planet's damaged broadcasting facilities. She finally opened the door and was greeted by a red-faced Laktheer.

"What, are you deaf, girl?" he demanded incredulously.

Ebola-chan laughed and casually flicked one of her long pink locks out of her eyes.

"The Sultana can start her day when she damn well feels like it."

"Maybe so," Laktheer retorted with flashing eyes. "But my _apprentice_ had better be ready to start _her_ day at nine hundred hours sharp."

"Don't be such a spoilsport."

Laktheer shook his head and muttered something about disrespectful newbs before leading her out into the yacht's observation deck. Since the ship was in home port, its auxiliary blast shield was down and the pair reveled in the breeze that fluttered the ship's Chaos-profaned pennants. The smell of decaying corpse wafted off the giant mound, and to Ebola-chan's befuddled horror, she felt her mouth involuntarily watering at the scent. She put the feeling out of her mind and they both looked out at the city she now ruled.

Slave crews of captured Imperium soldiers were already hard at work putting the planet back together. Compared to other Chaos devotees, Nurgle cultists could be surprisingly fastidious, and making their new home clean and orderly was obviously the first goal on the collective agenda. Sky cranes slowly sifted through the rubble. One man hour at a time, debris was being cleared away; girders were being lowered into freshly poured foundations; and everything was being scrubbed and spit-shined. Laktheer handed her a data tablet and she viewed the screen first with disinterest, and then with delight.

"I'm on the front page!" she cried, astonished.

It was true. An image of Ebola-chan graced the front page of every news publication and blog on Ulkair's Reach, from semi-legitimate purveyors of breaking stories right down to the fashion rags. Indeed, Nurglepolitian magazine had her taking up almost the entire front page in her nurse's uniform, next to the headline "Fashionista! Is our new ruler's new look ready to take the fashion world by plague?" Gossip tabloids were already speculating on her inevitable affairs, presumed to be both numerous and torrid. Even pornography sites had secretly recorded videos of her public Initiation as front page fap material. Bemused, Ebola-chan put the tablet down and looked to Laktheer for advice.

"Don't let it get to you," he suggested.

"Actually, I'm starting to think this might actually get rather… fun," she replied with a lurid smile.

Laktheer snorted. "Don't expect it to be all fun and games, lass. Not as long as I'm your Master. In fact, I'd say it's about time for you to hit the books."

"Books? What books?"

"You'll see."

Laktheer led a curious Ebola-chan to the ship's bridge. She ignored the rumbling in her tummy and watched with placid good grace while he brow-beat fellow cultists into manning the ship's various stations and taking them into the air. Frankly, she was pleased to have Laktheer handling all the technicals for her. No doubt the relationship would prove just as beneficial for him, but she was still so overwhelmed by her transformation and the transformation of her entire universe that it seemed like letting him wield a finger of her authority by proxy was a small price to pay for the benefit of his guidance. Still, she considered, you could get a lot more tse tse flies with sugar than vinegar. She smiled and introduced herself, and coaxed introductions from her crew in turn.

Laktheer, of course, was acting as her first mate. At the helm was Cady, a young, nearly-albino woman with disorganized clumps of platinum blonde hair growing out of her scalp and pox scars all over her hands and face. Her Initiation had left her with hetereochroma as well – her right eye was icy blue, but her left eye was stained brown from the intensity of the fever she'd endured. Apart from all the scarring and dripping she was almost pretty but had either a little too much or a little too little of everything – a little too much teeth; a little too little nose; a little too much eyebrow; and a little too little fingernail, all of which were bitten down to the quick. She too turned out to have been a lifelong resident of Ebola-chan's homeworld that survived the plague by surrendering her life to the Nurgle cult.

There was also Balar, Cady's wizened master. He wouldn't say much about his life other than that he'd been happy each and every day of his life since being inducted into the Nurgle cult. He worked the information systems. At that panel he could manage the ship's communications; damage control robots; energy distribution; and life support. Balar was as brown as an acorn and as shriveled as a raisin, and he sported a long white beard that made his ever-so-slightly Asiatic features look downright sinister. Rounding out the bridge crew was a nearly mute Death Guard who was manning the yacht's hastily added weapons, and Ebola-chan couldn't get anything from him but that his name was Adrianus and that he was content to serve her. There were also a few awful, scurrying, marginally intelligent Things that Laktheer told her were Nurglings. They chattered and bickered amongst themselves at frequencies that seemed to have evolved specifically to give Ebola-chan a headache.

"Where are we going?" Ebola-chan finally asked, peering over Cady's shoulder and trying to make sense of the helm's byzantine GUI.

"Laktheer-san said to take us to the Fleet Library, mi-mi-milady," Cady stuttered nervously.

Ebola-chan felt for her immediately. The pink haired girl put a hand on Cady's shoulder and got in close.

"There's nothing to be worried about, okay? I want us to be really good friends!" Ebola-chan announce, making Cady's eyes brighten. "Call me Ebola-chan and don't hesitate to come to me for anything. Okay, Cady-chan?"

There were pinpricks of tears in the other girl's eyes, but she nodded and smiled before going back to the helm.

"So what's the Fleet Library?" Ebola-chan asked Laktheer.

"Each of the Nurgle Plaguefleets takes a library with them wherever we go. It's a symbol of our faith and a repository of our accumulated knowledge. Everything from obscure and hetereodox religious manuscripts to complex treatises on genetics and biology are collected for the greater good of Nurgle-heika," Laktheer explained. "The pride and joy of the Sixty Third Plaguefleet Library is a complete and original copy of Ibn Sina's Canon of Medicine. It might not be the most cutting edge medical text in existence, but as an historical artifact, its value is literally beyond estimation."

"Why can't I just read all this stuff on a data tablet?" Ebola-chan asked idly, returning to the Captain's seat.

Laktheer looked aghast.

"Perish the thought, my lady. Your status gives you a unique opportunity to engage with the original texts, and you'd better make the most of it or I'll tan your hide."

Ebola-chan fidgeted in her seat and tried to ignore her hungry belly while Cady navigated them through the airspace of Ulkair's Reach. In a tradition as old as time, civilian aircraft were forced to scramble for cover as Ebola-chan's flagship and its honor guard barreled straight through the middle of the city, ignoring every traffic regulation on the books. Cady finally set them down and Ebola-chan grabbed a cheese Danish to munch on. The Danish was fresh and flaky, and while it tasted heavenly, it just wouldn't settle in her stomach, leaving Ebola-chan just as hungry as she'd been since waking up. Laktheer led the party into the large Cobra-class Destroyer that had been retrofitted to house the Sixty Third's Library.

"Wow," she said immediately, oblivious to the stares of the ranking functionaries scurrying around the library. "It takes up the whole ship!?"

"Just about," Laktheer answered proudly.

"I'm surprised there aren't more people here," Ebola-chan admitted.

"You need special clearance to be allowed into the library. Of course, everything is open to you, milady."

Laktheer hurried off to find a curriculum of books for Ebola-chan to study, and Balar led Cady deep into the library on some pedagogical mission of his own. Adrianus walked to a corner, literally stared at a wall, and gave every indication he was happy to do so. Ebola-chan shrugged.

"It takes all kinds to make a world," she reasoned aloud to Adrianus' satisfied silence.

Soon Laktheer returned with a heaping stack of books.

"Here you are," he insisted even as Ebola-chan's face fell. "Here's the _Tao te Ching_, it'll give you a basic overview of philosophical thinking. Plato's _Republic_, which you'll need if you want to even think about taking an active role as ruler of this planet. _The Prince_ for the same reason. A few religious tractates. And, of course, the medical texts. _On Medicine_ by Aulus Celsus; almost everything in that book is wrong but it'll be a good place for you to start understanding the relationship between biology and physics. Some Galen. Hmm."

"You want me to read all these?" Ebola-chan squeaked.

"Aye, and pronto. You'd better get to it."

Ebola-chan obediently cracked open the first book he handed her, the _Tao te Ching_. She tried to skim it as quickly as she could, but sentences kept reaching out and arresting her attention. The point of the text always seemed just within her grasp but it eluded her whenever she reached out to try to grab it. It was impossible to make sense of it all. How could long and short be the same thing? What did he mean by a sudden windfall being as dangerous as an unexpected calamity? Ebola-chan signed and pored over it for as long as she could stand, and then moved onto the next one. Her tummy continued to tug at her nerve endings with increasing ferocity. Beside her, Laktheer availed himself of some book or other, seemingly as happy as a clam.

Ebola-chan got halfway through _Hypsiphrone_ before she finally snapped.

"Fuck this, Laktheer!" she cried, suddenly slamming the book shut. "There is way too much goddamn blood and virginity in this book! What the Hell is this even about? I swear if I don't get some food into me in the next twelve seconds I'm going to cut someone's head off!"

Laktheer looked up at her with an expression of mild reproach.

"There's no food or drink allowed in the library. Why don't you go back to the ship and get a snack?"

Ebola-chan stormed out of the library, with Adrianus following her at a respectful distance. She bowled a cultist to the floor aboard her yacht and pointed with eyes full of fire at the first cultist she saw.

"I want _food_," she demanded.

"Uh, of course, your Highness," the unfortunate woman sputtered. "Anything you want. What _do _you want?"

"Food! Now!"

The cultist scurried into the kitchen and came back with a deli sandwich. Ebola-chan took a big bite and swallowed, but it was as though there were a black hole somewhere in her esophagus. The food _tasted_ fine, tasted _great_ even, but it didn't make it down to her stomach to calm her strained nerves. Ebola-chan chucked the rest of the sandwich to the floor.

"No!" she cried angrily. "I need real food, damn it! Why isn't this working?"

The nervous cultist led Ebola-chan into the kitchen, where she immediately started rummaging through cabinets and discarding what she found.

"Cheese crackers? Gross. Wheat crackers? Gross. Baked beans? Gross. Ugh!" Ebola-chan threw open the door to the walk-in fridge. "What's in here?"

The cultist followed her nervously into the chilly room, but Ebola-chan paid her no mind. Nothing in the world existed for the pink haired Sultana but her stomach.

"Celery, carrots, potatoes, bell peppers…" she muttered, grabbing and pushing aside containers of prepped veggies. "Hey! What's this? It smells great."

"That's just leftovers, milady," the cultist objected.

"Leftover what?" Ebola-chan popped off the lid and took a deep inhalation. "Mm, heavenly."

"Blood pudding."

Without even waiting for silverware and heedless of the cultist's stare, Ebola-chan reached into the container and started shoveling pudding down her throat with her hands.

"Mmph, finally," she wheezed between gulps. "Real, edible food."

The cultist was secretly relieved. Now here was a problem that could be easily solved.

She tentatively suggested, "If it's blood milady wants for 'sup, that could very much be arranged."

"Yes! I think that'd be great… …?"

"Heisha, Ebola-kakka."

"Thanks, Heisha. You can just call me Ebola-chan."

Ebola-chan polished off the rest of the blood pudding and immediately felt better. Whatever alteration Nurgle's Initiation had wrought in her blood had obviously changed her metabolism as well. Ebola-chan licked the last of the crimson goo off her lips and returned to the library in a vastly improved mood.

Ebola-chan spent the rest of the afternoon reading, answering pointed or leading questions from Laktheer, and arguing about her interpretations of the text. She hadn't been forced to do so much reading all at once since early on in her medical training and her old study habits – that is, lack thereof – were dying hard. Finally he agreed to call it quits and the pair returned to the ship, along with Balar, Cady, and Adrianus.

"Urgh, does it seem cold in here to you?" Ebola-chan asked the moment she set foot on her flagship.

Laktheer shrugged.

"Seems alright to me, your Highness," Cady answered quietly.

"I said to call me Ebola-chan and I still say it's too cold!"

Ebola-chan fiddled with a nearby data panel and brought up the ship's climate control systems. According to the ship, it was seventy four degrees and thirty percent humidity. Ebola-chan immediately cranked up both dials.

"Well, now what?" Balar asked in an elderly, good-natured drawl.

"Dinner?" Ebola-chan asked hopefully.

"It'll be ready any time," Heisha mumbled from a nearby alcove.

Ebola-chan narrowed her eyes, shrugged, and then started towards the dining room. Laktheer followed her but Balar and Cady started off in the opposite direction.

"Hey, wait," Ebola-chan said. "Why don't you guys come have dinner with us?"

Cady looked at Balar with worried eyes, but the old man broke into a grin so wide that a massive cold sore at the side of his lips burst open and bled a little down his chin. Ebola-chan couldn't help but stare hungrily at the wound.

"Har har, sounds good to me, uh, your Highness-chan," he said.

So the five went to the dining room together. Adrianus refused all food and returned to what seemed to be his favorite position – face first staring at a wall. Balar and Cady sat across from Laktheer and Ebola-chan, and Heisha goaded slaves into serving the table, keeping the peace with threats of outlandish levels of violence. The four traded jokes and idle conversation, and wine flowed freely from cheap bottles nationalized from Rogue Trader Joe's.

"Ugh, don't you think it's getting hot in here?" Laktheer asked, tugging at the collar of his black robe.

Ebola-chan retorted, "Nope! In fact, it's finally comfortable."

Balar curiously checked the thermostat, which read ninety five degrees with eighty percent humidity. Well, that was fine by him. He'd been raised in a subtropical zone and the ship felt just like home. He decided not to bother saying anything to the others.

More plates of food were brought out by obedient slaves. Ebola-chan ate the appetizers, luxuriating in the taste but already hungry again for the filling refreshment of blood. Fortunately, Heisha had the Sultana covered, as promised. When it was time for the main course, Heisha led a bound and gagged Imperium Guardsman into the dining room and put him on display for the group.

"I wasn't exactly sure how you wanted me to prepare him, milady," she explained. "So I just brought him in raw."

Ebola-chan gazed at the captive with greedy yellow eyes. For his part, the captured Imperium guardsman looked neither angry nor afraid. In fact it seemed as though he had already given himself up for dead. Ebola-chan picked up a sharp knife from the table and slowly worked it into the guardsman's pale skin. She lifted his forearm up to her mouth and drank greedily from the wound she'd opened.

"Is this what you wanted, milady?" Heisha asked.

"It was perfect. It seems like a little of him went a long way; why don't you save the rest for a midnight snack?" Ebola-chan suggested with a feral, bloodstained grin.

Heisha shrugged and shuffled the zombified man out. Ebola-chan noticed that everyone was staring at her.

"What?" she demanded with her hands on her hips.

"Ebola-chan, your hair, it's…?" Cady stammered.

"It's what?"

"It's glowing," Balar appraised with a cackle.

Startled, Ebola-chan reached up to grab the left tresse of her hair. Sure enough, the weird shape at the end of the pink strands had turned deep red and was glowing faintly. Ebola-chan blinked yellow eyes.

"What's this?" she demanded of Laktheer.

He shrugged. "Oh, just another surprise from Papa, I expect. You should feel grateful."

Ebola-chan stroked the tangle absentmindedly. It felt rubbery and wormy underneath her fingertips, but not bad. Oh well, it was just one more strange transformation in a week that had been full of them. She put it out of her head and returned to the table.

Cady said, "So, what's next for us, Ebola… chan?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, we'd only been assigned bridge duty on this ship temporarily, and we didn't know it was going to be commissioned by the Sultana herself," Balar explained. "The ship, of course, is yours. As for us, well - in theory, we have to return to our jobs in the Acquisitions and Procurement Division tomorrow and you'll have a new ship crew assigned. But…"

It took Ebola-chan a moment to understand the implication, but when she realized what he wanted, her eyes glistened a little with happy tears.

"You mean you guys want to stay with me?" she asked hopefully.

"Well, of course, milady," Cady said. "Who wouldn't rather hang around with the Sultana than do drudge work for the Dark Mechanicus?"

"It might be dangerous. There's no telling what Papa Nurgle has in mind for our dear Sultana," Laktheer warned.

"That's okay. I was actually hoping we could be friends," Cady quietly squeaked.

Ebola-chan was ecstatic. "That'd make me so happy!"

"What about you, Balar? Is that okay with you?" asked Laktheer.

"Okay with me? Ha! I'm sure as shit coming with you. I can't let little Cady run around with riff-raff like you unsupervised," Balar cackled.

"Adrianus?"

The Death Guard turned away from the wall to face Laktheer, nodded once, and returned to staring at whatever it was that was capable of holding his attention for so long.

"Well, it's fine by me, Ebola-chan," Laktheer said. "The staffing decision is all up to you; you _are_ the Sultana after all."

"I'm so happy that you're all willing to come with me! Thank you, thank you, thank you!" Ebola-chan said, giving a hug to everyone in her party, even the stiff Adrianus. Then she let a ferocious yawn escape. "Oops. I think it's bed time. Hey, Cady – the stateroom I'm sleeping in feels enormous when I'm all alone. Want to have a sleepover?"

Cady looked like she might cry, and Balar spared her the embarrassment by cutting in. "There's one more thing, Ebola-kakka. I think your flagship needs a name."

The pink haired girl scrunched up her face and thought hard.

"What do you have in mind?" she finally asked.

"How about… the _Ebola Gay_?"

Ebola-chan laughed uproariously at the bad pun, and nodded her assent.

"_Ebola Gay_ it is," she announced. "Com'on, Cady, come check out my room!"

The two girls left the dining room with a giggle. Balar and Laktheer looked at each other across the long table, which was starting to seem less oversized now that they were a party of five.

"That girl is going to be nothing but trouble," Balar opined, taking a crumpled cigarette out of somewhere in his robes and lighting up.

Laktheer did him one better by retrieving an electric vaporizer filled with hashish and taking a colossal hit. Balar looked impressed.

Laktheer coughed dry vapor out of his lungs and agreed, "Aye, I expect you're right. Still, I'd say it promises to be a more exciting adventure than we'd have on the front lines taking bolter fire and clashing with fascist Imps. And you've got to admit, that girl's got style."

"I wonder what Grandfather is up to."

"Ha! Why bother worrying about it? No one's been able to second-guess him yet."

"You're right about that, young man. Now, if you wouldn't mind letting me take a little try of your vaporizer…"

Ebola-chan let an awkward but happy Cady into the Captain's cabin. The blonde woman's hetereochromatic eyes got wide.

"Wow! It's so…" Cady searched for the right word.

"Fancy," she finally finished, red-faced.

"I guess so!" Ebola-chan said as she hopped onto her bed and started bouncing. "Come on, what are you waiting for?"

Cady got up onto the bed and started jumping alongside Ebola-chan. The Sultana pushed the other girl down, but Cady quickly recovered and responded a rapid pillow strike that sent Ebola-chan sprawling. Soon, both girls were laughing and parrying errant blows with their pillows, and playfully fought until they were exhausted.

Ebola-chan woke up deep in the night, driven by some hunger she couldn't explain. She summoned Heisha to bring in her midnight snack, but even half a pint of blood didn't make her feel any better. What was wrong? It was something tight and hot and set her teeth on edge. She stared at the vacant-eyed Guardsman, and shifted on her legs. Where was this sensation coming from? Every part of her body felt like it had been covered in itching powder. Instinctively, without even knowing what she was doing, Ebola-chan slid a hand down her panties and had a painfully intense orgasm the moment she connected with her pink lips. She let out a sudden loud gasp.

"More," she hissed the moment she regained her speech.

Ebola-chan lost track of all her surroundings. Her craving for sex was easily as intense as her hunger had been before, if not moreso. Whatever it was that lived inside of her was desperate to spread; she was desperate to commingle fluids and share the white hot heat that burned inside her chest. Without a moment's hesitation she undid the Guardsman's belt and immediately began sucking his cock. He flinched, but something had drained him of all will to resist. Ebola-chan ran her moist pink lips up and down his shaft, searching for her own pleasure and completely ignoring his. The Guardsman stood silently until the very end, when he grunted just a little bit and shot a heavy load of thick semen into Ebola-chan's mouth, which she swallowed greedily.

Suddenly, she remembered who and where she was. Embarrassed, she looked up to see Cady staring at her incredulously in the cabin's dim night lighting.

"Oh my gosh! I'm so sorry," Ebola-chan gasped, wiping a small dribble of semen off the side of her mouth.

Ebola-chan was astonished to see Cady shift awkwardly under the sheets as though she were trying to hide something.

"No, _I'm_ so sorry, milady! Oh please forgive me! I didn't mean to watch, I just… I just… I just…" Cady looked ready to cry.

There is a time for letting things go, but there's also a time to push as hard as you can. Ebola-chan judged this situation to be the latter. "You just what?"

"I'msosorryIwasmasturbatingwhilewatchingyouIshouldhavelefttheroomohgodI'mreallysorryIdidn'tmeantooffendyou," Cady exploded in a single breath.

To Cady's astonishment, Ebola-chan slunk up to the bed, taking off her grey nightshirt and exposing glistening pink nipples in the dim light. Cady could only shake while Ebola-chan put her arms around the girl, and then Ebola-chan pushed her down and touched their mouths together. Cady finally broke and gave in greedily to the other girl, and they kissed hard, tongues searching inside each others' mouths, saliva from two people mixing and churning and bubbling. Cady wasn't the most beautiful girl Ebola-chan had ever seen – far from it – but she found the girl's earnestness attractive. Combined with that scintillating fire inside her thundering chest, a fire that had a life of its own and wanted to spread by any and all means possible, Ebola-chan was helpless to stop herself from suddenly jumping downward and shoving her tongue deep into Cady's pussy. Cady shuddered and let out a cry. The stricken Guardsman watched them blankly, though another erection towered between his legs. Over and over again Ebola-chan pounded Cady's cunt with her tongue, jamming as much of her infected saliva into the other girl as she could muster. Cady had a second orgasm that sent her into uncontrollable shaking all the way from her thighs right down to the tips of her toes.

"Watch," Ebola-chan whispered into Cady's ear when the girl was finally able to breathe again.

Ebola-chan went back to the Guardsman and led him by the hand into the bed. He didn't resist nor did he seem excited; it seemed that all that was left was the compliant animal shell of the man he'd formerly been. He didn't struggle when she threw him back-first against the soft cushioning of the mattress, nor did he object when she climbed on top of him and jammed his dick into her agonized pussy. She rode him like he was nothing more than a human dildo, giving no thought to his comfort or pleasure. She slid herself up and down his shaft over and over, mercilessly driving him deep into her belly, slicking his rod and covering it in her polluted cum. Finally, after several orgasms that did not quench the hungry fire within her but at least dimmed it, she milked the semen out of him and lay back into the sheets, breathing hard, seeping infection all over the sheets.

Cady leaned into the crook of Ebola-chan's arm and the Sultana kicked the now-worthless Guardsman to the floor, where he lay until deep in the night when Heisha retrieved and cleaned him for later use. The two girls slept easily in one another's warm arms.


	3. Contagion

A point of light, scintillating in the distance. She was floating – no, she couldn't be floating. She had no body. Grinning faces came out of the fog and then disappeared just as quickly. Her little sister ran up and buried her face into her leg.

"Oniiii-sama! Where are you!?"

"Where am I?" Ebola-chan repeated blankly.

"Oniiii-sama!"

Ebola-chan woke up in bed with a violent start. It took her a minute to get her bearings. Her small, bare breasts heaved with adrenaline, and her sheets were wet and clammy. A fever? No… of course not. Just a painfully intense dream.

Ebola-chan sat up in bed and looked at Cady for another minute. The other girl was still sleeping. Ebola-chan felt a small tinge of regret, which she quickly smothered for being immature. Was she really going to be as shallow as all that? Ebola-chan watched as the sheets rose and fell in a rhythmic pattern, tracing the curve of Cady's ample breasts. Ebola-chan's eyes followed the line of the other woman's pox-scarred neck up over her almost-pretty face and then on to her glossy, platinum-colored hair. Ebola-chan consciously slowed the rhythm of her breathing to match Cady's and let herself get lost in a sea of unmediated thoughts and emotions. Little squalls of confusion gave way here and there to miniature tempests of rage, and then calmed to doldrums of muted affect through which she occasionally caught glimpses of something beautiful just below the surface. Every so often, she spied a kaleidoscope of movement and color beneath the confusion – the living coral of joy hidden just beneath the waves, stretching out to the uttermost horizon. Ebola-chan breathed.

Finally, she broke her meditative trance. Pausing only long enough to tussle the sleeping Cady's hair, she clambered into the shower, still naked from the festivities of the night before. Hot water sprayed over her body and washed away the sweat of her painful dreams. She heard someone else in the cabin's luxurious bathroom, and assuming it to be Cady, she swung open the glass door to the shower in invitation.

"Oh, perfect! Don't move a muscle!" a strange voice said.

Ebola-chan let out a little shriek and hid behind the steam-fogged glass.

"Who the Hell are you?" she demanded, peeking out from behind her veil of protection.

There was an unfamiliar Nurgle cultist wearing a tailored suit looking at her through the lens of a comically oversized photocamera, flanked by a smirking Laktheer. Ebola-chan heard numerous snicks as the mechanical device opened and closed its lens aperture faster than the eye could blink. Ebola-chan could feel fury boiling over within her.

"Just one more shot from the front, please," the cameraman suggested without a hint of emotion.

"Laktheer, what is he _doing_ here?!" Ebola-chan demanded angrily.

"Oh, we just needed some shots for the dailies," Laktheer answered placidly. "You know, meet the Sultana; see how the aristocratic class lives; that sort of thing. You're booked solid until twenty three hundred and then you've got the late shows."

"Get _out!_"

Laktheer said in a languid tone, "It's not my fault you overslept your photoshoot."

"You didn't tell me anything about it!"

"I know."

Ebola-chan threw a bar of soap at his face that cost more than most Imperium citizens made in a week, sending Laktheer and the cameraman both scurrying for cover. She slammed the shower door shut and heaved angrily. There was something funny about the contrast between her scrumptious surroundings and the tropical storms of uncertainty that still roiled inside of her. She consciously slowed her breathing and slowly coaxed her pounding heart back into complacence. It _was_ a nice shower.

In fact it was the single nicest shower ever built, that she was sure of. There were people in the Imperium who actually _lived_ like this? The walls were tiled with blue-green marble she vaguely recognized as being Neo-Astorian, and there was some incredibly subtle pattern to the shading that she couldn't quite discern. There were five showerheads, spraying down every part of her body with refreshing warmth. The lighting was subtle and moody without being sulky. Ebola-chan realized with a start that the metal in the fixtures was all actually platinum, and not chromed steel as she'd initially assumed. The temperature of the water was controlled right down to the hundredth of a degree by touchscreen set into one wall; a cursory investigation proved it was also capable of piping 21.1 sound throughout the bathroom at volumes that ranged from tiptoeing housefly all the way up to actual threat to life and limb. Ebola-chan didn't like to think of herself as materialistic, but there was no denying that her mood was brightening as she examined her property more closely.

"Hey, hurry up in there!" Laktheer called out from her bedroom.

She was going to kill that man.

Ebola-chan finally got tired of the shower, but not before her skin shriveled to almost prune status. She carefully peeked out to make sure Laktheer was gone, and then stepped into a towel and then out into her bedroom. Cady was there sorting through the closet, and already had a few picks for her to choose from.

Ebola-chan didn't know where Cady had come up with them, but there were dresses and skirts and boots galore on her bed, awaiting her approval. With a surge of glee Ebola-chan held up one dress after another to her dripping body. Every color of the rainbow was represented and even two impossible colors, somehow evoked from the natural light spectrum by highly designed, futuristic metamaterials. But though the girls giggled their way through one possibility after another, none of them quite seemed right to Ebola-chan. She realized she already had the outfit she wanted to represent her image – the nurse's uniform from her hospital, topped with an outlandish cap that had a winged blood drop emblazoned on the front. Ebola-chan stepped into a pair of bright pink panties while Cady continued to mull her options. Laktheer was waiting for the Sultana outside the stateroom with a look of barely-contained impatience.

"Finally!" he hissed. "You already missed Mornings with Greta van Susteren. We'll get a few photos of you on the deck for the pressers and then haul ass to Afternoon Delight at Nurglevox Studios."

"Wait a minute… how do you know so much about showbiz?" Ebola-chan asked as Laktheer herded her towards the sundeck.

Laktheer looked uncomfortable. "Oh, you know…"

"No?"

"Forget about it. As your Master, I'm formally demanding that you drop that line of questioning."

"Hey, wait! But I want to –"

Too late, he rushed her out onto the deck and straight into a wall of strobing camera flashes. Ebola-chan squeaked and raised her hands over her face, but the various creatures doing the photographing were relentless. Nurglings crawled all around her to catch her at every angle, and she had to constantly shoo them away from taking shots of her panties up her skirt. They jostled each other for position and Ebola-chan heard an occasional scream as one photographer stabbed another in order to get a slightly better position. They were a noisy bunch and the din of their arguments echoed under the grey, partly cloudy sky. After she'd been thoroughly humiliated, Laktheer, aided copiously by Adrianus, drove them all off the deck.

"Okay!" Laktheer nodded once and then took out his pocket computer. "Cady, we're good to lift off; take us to Nurglevox if you please."

"Sure thing," the girl's voice crackled over the comm.

_Ebola Gay_ sedately lifted off in front of the increasingly rebuilt Central Hospital. The change worked in the city was astonishing. The Nurgle cultists were working day and night to bring their city back to life and it showed. Buildings too structurally damaged to be repaired were hastily demolished, and hulking mecha almost the size of Dreadnaughts carefully lowered massive steel beams into the pits that would serve as the foundation for new skyscrapers to replace them. The sky was busy with traffic, and every aerial highway was packed with aircars and transport vehicles. The air smelled like mech exhaust and the detritus of restaurants. Ebola-chan stood at the edge of the sundeck and took it all in as her flagship eased its way into the sky.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Laktheer asked from beside her.

She glanced at him sidelong.

"Feeling thoughtful?" she asked.

Laktheer grinned. "It's too soon to tell."

"So where are we going, exactly?"

"Nurglevox Studios. They're a huge interplanetary conglomerate with syndicates on every Nurgle-held world. Afternoon Delight is a variety show; you know, news, comedy, musical acts, pornography. It has something like 40% share in its timeslot on all Nurgle-held worlds. With a new Sultana coronated, it's sure to be the most-watched thing all day," Laktheer answered with a grin.

"What's the host like?" Ebola-chan asked nervously.

"Oh, she's an _extremely_ decadent woman. Powers only know how she ended up under Nurgle's sway rather than Slaanesh, but the gods move in mysterious ways."

Ebola-chan turned back to the sky and let the wind whip through her hair, causing the two strands and the strange, red shapes at the end to flail around wildly. One of them even hit Laktheer in the face and startled him, to Ebola-chan's lasting amusement. She yawned, stretched, and realized that she felt a dull pain in her back. Curiously she reached up to where the two hard nubs had been just under her shoulder blades. She was shocked if not alarmed to discover that they'd grown larger, and in fact, had broken her skin. Well, she wasn't going to ask Laktheer about it. Maybe Cady could examine them later…

Finally _Ebola Gay_ made it to Nurglevox Studios and parked in VIP parking on the skyscraper's roof. The Nurgle cultists had made quick work of making the skyscraper their own, and there wasn't so much as a leftover logo of what had formerly been the headquarters of the planet's primary news source. What they hadn't changed was the architecture – all glass and sunlight and flowing water, and bright, colorful flowers growing along the sides of the sundrenched corridors. The flowers were still bright and colorful but Ebola-chan didn't recognize them as any of the species she could remember from her childhood. They looked a little strange, and some of them dripped weird, viscous substances onto the floor, puddles of which were quickly cleaned by fastidious robots. An officious looking cultist in traditional black robes and waving a datapad accosted them and then led them to Afternoon Delight's green room.

The show was done live in front of an audience, and Ebola-chan watched nervously as the credits led into the first segment. She'd be going on third, just after the pornography, so she paid careful attention to the proceedings to try to gauge the personality of the show and its frankly bizarre host, Kristen Schaal.

The woman was – Ebola-chan didn't know where to _begin_ describing her. There was obviously something human at the center of… it; between all the ropes, leashes, tubes, clamps, spikes, and hooks Ebola-chan could make out a human form, though a bloated and stained one. Her human portion was covered in what appeared to be livid bruises. The rest of her… well, the rest of her was a weird plant thing grafted haphazardly to the rest of her body. It seemed to be doing most of the breathing for her, and tubes carrying green ichor flowed into her purpled skin and more tubes carried some chunky yellow substance out of it. Whenever she moved, the hooks and straps moved with her and made an enormous clatter. Schaal's residual human form was naked but Ebola-chan would be hard pressed to find anything erotic about her. Despite it all she had the most cheerful voice Ebola-chan had ever heard, and she was bantering with her first guest, a comedian from offworld.

"So where do you come up with these _ideas_?" Kristen enthused, clanking her harness with a sweep of her arm. "I hear that they're planning to ban you from the entire Nurglevox network; you must be doing _something_ right!"

Kristen mugged for the crowd, who erupted into laughter and applause.

"Well, honestly, I just think about things. Like a lot. Like the other day I was in the bathroom, and I thought, damn! You know, every building has at least one bathroom, and some of them have dozens of bathrooms. And every bathroom has at least one toilet- that's what makes it a bathroom, right? But where are all these toilets coming from?" The crowd cheered and hooted. "No seriously, where are all these toilets coming from? There must be like, a whole world out there somewhere, where they do nothing but build toilets. There must be warehouses of toilets the size of small moons out there somewhere, just waiting for the next order of like ten million toilets to come in. And then they load all those toilets onto a ship, you know, and send them all over the galaxy."

Schaal asked, "Did you actually try to discover anything about the companies that build these toilets."

"Of course not," the comedian responded immediately. "I mean I don't actually _care_. I just thought it was funny."

Apparently it was, because the audience cheered and catcalled the comedian.

The next segment was blatant and hardcore pornography filmed beforehand but broadcast to the audience simultaneously. Unlike most porn on the planetary intranet, this was actually high-budget, and starred well-reputed actors and actresses and a gold star director. Ebola-chan watched with more bemusement than arousal as the twenty minute segment played out. The plot was almost childishly simple. Evil Space Marines captured a peace-loving Nurgle hippy, brutalized her, and then gangraped her. The camera occasionally cut to the audience reaction, and many members of the audience male and female alike were shamelessly masturbating on interplanetary television. The segment ended with the poor Nurgle girl sneaking a Flamer out of the sleeping Space Marines' armory – to be continued on next week's show, of course.

Finally it was her turn. An obsequious functionary led her to the stage, and she slowly and nervously made her way towards the interview table accompanied by the cheers, jeers, and catcalls of the crowd. Ebola-chan fiddled with the hem of her skirt and sat carefully in the chair across from the rattling monstrosity that was Schaal. Ebola-chan tried not to fidget and failed.

"Ebola-chan, the newest Sultana! Congratulations on your ascension!" Schaal announced grandly, to the continuing cheer of the crowd.

Ebola-chan played with her hair. There was no need for a mic; specialized sound monitoring equipment picked her voice out of the noise and amplified it above the crowd.

"Um, thank you. It really is an honor."

"So, tell me about yourself," Kristen said cheerfully, rattling metal and leather. "We hardly know anything about you, except you're the hottest thing on the planet right now. I mean look at you! You look like an angel straight from the Warp."

Ebola-chan blushed furiously as some of the men – and women – in the audience whistled.

"I guess so," she replied.

"So?"

"So what?"

Kristen laughed easily. "So tell us about yourself."

"Well, I guess I'm kind of the Sultana now; to be honest I'm a little overwhelmed and I have no idea what everyone expects from me," Ebola-chan answered in a single breath. "I really want to do my best so I'm learning everything I can about your people and my world. I really just… I just want to do my best!"

The audience cheered, and Ebola-chan tried not to have a panic attack.

"Well, tell everyone this, then – where do you stand on the post-natal abortion debate?"

This was new to Ebola-chan. "The… oh… uh…"

"I guess they should see a specialist?" she finally hazarded.

Half the audience cheered, and the other half muttered into their robes. Schaal took it in stride.

"Well, what about tax reform?" the host inquired. "Where do you stand on simplifying the budget?"

This one seemed easy. "Well, nobody likes high taxes! I promise to do everything in my power to make taxes simple, understandable, and low."

Almost universal approval from the audience. Ebola-chan breathed a little more easily, but what was all this shit!? Why hadn't Laktheer bothered to brief her?

"Let's move away from the issues and talk about your _personal life_ for a minute," Kristen cooed. "So, do you have a _boyfriend_ yet? Or maybe a girlfriend? I wouldn't want to _assume_!"

Cheers, catcalls.

"Uh, I don't have any … I don't have any committed relationships at the moment," Ebola-chan said, choosing her words carefully under the assumption that Cady was watching from somewhere.

"The latest edition of Hawker says that you've already started an affair with actor Judius Rex; is that correct?"

Ebola-chan lost her temper.

"It fucking well isn't!" she hissed.

Murmurs of approval from the crowd. Everybody read Hawker and everyone hated it for its sleazy, incessant, ethics-free interpolation into public figures' lives. And, of course, some of the audience members were already judging their chances with the suddenly unattached Sultana.

"You hear that, folks?" Kristen appealed to the audience with a wink. "Do you think I have a chance?"

Cheers. Laughter. Cries of "Yes!" and "No!" from the stands. Ebola-chan blushed, more embarrassed than ever.

Kristen asked, "So, what do you think of your latest photograph? People are already calling it 'iconic' and 'an instant classic.'"

"What… photograph?" Ebola-chan asked nervously.

On one of the studio screens, Ebola-chan was suddenly greeted with a picture of herself, taken that morning. She went red as she realized that it depicted her in her nurse's outfit trying to hold down her skirt as a gust of wind blew across the sundeck. Naturally it had been taken exactly as her bright pink panties were on full display, and she could almost – but not quite – appreciate the artistry of how the shade of her underwear perfectly matched her bright pink hair. She was aghast.

"Those bastards!" she announced.

"Come on, you're _beautiful_," Schaal said. "Just go ahead and embrace it!"

Ebola-chan realized with a sigh she didn't have much choice in the matter. After all, at least in this photo she was actually wearing clothes; the few shots the photographer had sneaked when she was still taking a shower were also readily available, but the titillation of the panty shot seemed to appeal to people just as much as her actual, full-on nudity. She was a sexual icon now, and trying to fight it would be tilting at windmills.

Kristen laughed easily and moved on to the next topic.

"If you could ask Papa Nurgle, _everybody's_ Lord and Savior, for one boon, what would it be?"

Ebola-chan nervously fiddled with the hem of her skirt and let the pause draw out for a second too long. Her stomach rumbled.

"I'd ask for a blood-filled goblet twenty kilometers high!" she blurted.

Laughter and approval from the audience. Even Kirsten laughed with what seemed like genuine amusement. Mercifully, the host drew the segment to a close.

"Thanks for watching everyone; I hope you enjoyed our _exclusive_ interview with Papa Nurgle's _newest_ champion, Sultana Ebola-chan! And now on our next segment, we have one of the hottest musical acts in the sector, Raffi."

Ebola-chan allowed herself to be gratefully ushered off the stage, and then she took a few deep breaths in the green room. She caught sight of Laktheer and glared daggers at him.

"Why didn't you warn me there'd be… _issues_?" she hissed.

Laktheer laughed easily and brushed aside her anger. "I wanted to see how you'd do on your own. I'd say you did pretty good, kid."

"I swear, I'm going to…" Ebola-chan's tummy rumbled again. She realized she hadn't eaten all day. "I haven't eaten all day."

Laktheer contemplated and finally nodded once.

"Okay, I know just the place for you. I suppose I'll cancel the nude shoot I had scheduled in thirty minutes…"

"You did _what_?" Ebola-chan seethed.

The restaurant they arrived at was on the top story of one of downtown's largest buildings, still largely intact after all the shelling. Cady set the ship down on the roof and then all five of them walked inside. The staff had quickly driven all their high-powered clientele out of the restaurant after Laktheer had casually called them and told them that the Sultana was coming, and so they had the entire view to themselves. Laktheer was casually imperious; Cady was ecstatic; Balar was humble; Ebola-chan was mostly just hungry and Adrianus had no idea where to turn. Every wall in the building was glass so no matter where he looked, he experienced an uncomfortable amount of sensory overload. One of the restaurant staffers had enough compassion to throw a tablecloth over his head, solving the dilemma. They sat down at a large mahogany table while waiters scurried about.

"I watched you on Afternoon Delight," Cady said to Ebola-chan shyly. "I thought you did good."

"Um, thanks," Ebola-chan replied, taking a gulp of wine to steady her still-strained nerves.

"So, what's our next step, ah?" Balar asked, looking at Ebola-chan but largely asking Laktheer.

"Well, I figured we should do a few days of press conferences, meet the public, shake some babies, you know, that sort of thing," Laktheer answered idly, staring out of the window at the traffic streaming past the building.

"But isn't there more to ruling than just politicking and eating better than everybody else?" Cady asked.

Laktheer laughed. "Not so as I've seen."

Ebola-chan glowered.

"I'm not your meal ticket, guys."

Cady looked petrified, but Balar reached across the table and put his hand on Ebola-chan's wrist.

"You're right, girlie, and nobody thinks of you that way. Even though we haven't known you for very long, you're a dear friend and we want to be here to support you. I know you're trying not to think about it, but you've lost your homeworld and everyone you've ever known. You don't have to admit it to yourself all at once. But we're here for you when you need us."

"Aye. I promise," added Laktheer.

"Me too," said Cady.

Even Adrianus managed to grunt an assent from beneath his tablecloth.

The cultists dug into a more conventional appetizer, but the restaurant staff had something special for Ebola-chan. Sure enough, a regional governor, red-faced and livid, cursed and struggled as he was herded out of the kitchen by two towering, thuggish waiters in tuxedos.

"I demand you release me this instant!" the governor spat. "If you let me go perhaps the Inquisition will kill you mercifully, rather than slowly!"

The Maître d' proffered him to Ebola-chan.

"Will this do, milady?" he asked.

Ebola-chan licked her lips and looked him up and down. He wasn't the most attractive member of the opposite sex; far from it. He was fat, balding, and carried himself with a pompous air despite being a condemned prisoner. He was everything about officialdom that Ebola-chan had always hated back when she was a human, and giving a little back appealed to her sense of right and wrong.

"I think he'll do nicely," she answered.

So, over the protesting yowls of the governor, she dug in. His blood was hot and coppery, and it slid across her tongue without congealing. It had a faint tang to it, a combination of tartness and spiciness that made her spine shiver with delight. Ebola-chan could feel her nipples harden against the taut white fabric of her outfit, and her toes curled in her boots. She drank to her heart's content. Her metabolism shot up so intensely that her yellow eyes glowed with pleasure, and the ruby Ebola strands at the ends of her hair reddened in sympathy. She finally released him with a gasp of pleasure and was embarrassed to see that everyone was staring at her. She pushed the semi-conscious man away.

"Shall I box the leftovers for you, milady?" a waiter asked at her side.

"No thanks," Ebola-chan answered, her teeth red with blood. "You can just throw the rest out."

Ebola-chan zoned back in to the conversation. Balar and Laktheer were arguing about the relative merits of .75 caliber bolters verses .115 caliber, and Cady smiled up at her nervously. Ebola-chan reached over and put her hand on the nervous girl's knee.

"You're still liked," Ebola-chan whispered to her, too softly for anyone else to hear. "You're still wanted."

Laktheer slammed his fist against the table.

"You can't go wrong with more stopping power!" he insisted loudly.

"Bah, you ignorant runt! .75 caliber is more than enough to ruin anyone's breakfast. But you need the lower caliber's versatility! It can be used in a much larger variety of weapons! Almost any bolter you'll recover on the battlefield will be compatible with .75 caliber rounds!"

"So don't waste them!" Laktheer countered. ".115 caliber is more likely to penetrate heavy armor!"

"Boys," Cady whispered back to Ebola-chan.

Both girls giggled.

The rest of the day was spent zipping all over town, giving interviews and attending photoshoots with the new Sultana. _Ebola Gay_ commended itself aptly as the perfect blend of speed and luxury, and Heisha and her band of quiet cultists kept the ship shipshape and spotless despite all the fuss. Ebola-chan attended another late show and traded banter with the bleach-toothed host, and then finally returned, exhausted, to her own bedroom. She was surprised by a knock at her door.

"Cady!" she announced with some surprise. "Do you want to come in?"

Cady was wearing one of the dresses she'd picked out earlier. It was dark blue and shimmered at the edges of the impossible spectrum, and perfectly balanced the ice blue of her right eye and the brown of her left. The other girl smiled coyly.

"Actually, I was wondering if you wanted to come _out_. You've hardly had a moment to yourself all day. Let's sneak off the ship and hit up the town."

"Laktheer will be furious," Ebola-chan answered. And with that realization, she whooped with delight. "You're on!"

Neither girl really knew their way around the city since the Change had swept away their former lives. They hired an auto rickshaw and demanded the driver take them to the swankiest club in town. He shrugged, took their money, and drove them to a large, bustling club in the center of downtown with a line that stretched all the way around the building's four corners and back. A glowing LED sign out front read Club Ombudsman. Ebola-chan paid him an entire night's wages and then some to stay outside and serve as the girls' personal carriage. Cady eyed the line with some concern.

"Ebola-chan, I don't think we'll ever get in! Just look how long the queue is!"

But Ebola-chan had learned something from a day of being the planet's most talked-about person. She grabbed Cady's wrist and walked them straight up to the bouncer, a disease-mutilated Ork so tall he looked like he could pick up and throw even a hulking Chaos Marine like Adrianus half the length of a football field. He warily eyed the two girls.

"Name?" he asked, waving at them with a clipboard.

"Sultana Ebola-chan," the pink-haired woman answered without a hint of guile.

The Ork blinked. "Sultana?"

"Yep. And you'd better let me and my friend inside before I get mad."

The Ork rapidly weighed his options. If this woman really _was_ the Sultana, every second he delayed her would be beaten out of his hide if she got angry. On the other hand, she might just be a run-of-the-mill cosplayer, in which case he was letting her skip the line and the rules for nothing. But the look in her eyes swayed him. And anyway, even if she wasn't actually the Sultana, the standards of human attractiveness had been carefully drilled into him until he could almost tell the difference, and his best guess was that the woman was beautiful. He nodded once and stepped aside, letting Ebola-chan and Cady past the velvet ropes.

Club Ombudsman was an abomination beyond the prurient imagination of even the most repressed Imperium monk. It was a paean to hedonism that rivaled anything that Slaanesh could come up with, and it had a franchise on almost every world under Chaos control. Fetishes were grouped alphabetically, and there were words Ebola-chan didn't even recognize on the list. There was a long bar with numerous creatures and cultists of every imaginable descent milling around and swapping fluids; flawless, topless female slaves worked behind the counter and attended to the clientele's every whim. Cady was a little taken aback at first, but she could feel a freak flag slowly being hoisted somewhere deep inside her, a place she normally tried to keep hidden. A topless slave hummed up to them and offered them a tray with every drug imaginable for almost any physiology.

"What even is this?" Cady asked, grabbing a vial and holding it up. "5-MeO-DiPT?"

The slave answered with expert precision. "Euphoric psychedelic. Great if you're here to get laid and see some pretty colors."

"You've done it yourself?" Ebola-chan asked with some surprise.

The woman shrugged good-naturedly. "I may be a slave, but the boss treats us alright and doesn't mind if we have a good time. Besides, customers like it when you can offer a personal opinion on the products we sell."

Cady decided to play it safe and stick with a beer and a joint, but Ebola-chan decided to try an exotic psychedelic and bought a pill of prosceline from the girl. She popped it down the hatch, and the two women explored the club. It had – well, everything, really. There were orgies with pulse-pounding music and strobing lights in some rooms of the building. In others waited a facsimile of a pre-Imperium bacchanal, with naked slaves feeding clients grapes on chaises longue and harp players serenading them in time with the movement of the partners grinding against their genitals. There was a no-holds-barred boxing ring in another section, with hundreds of cheering, sweaty audience members making bets on brawling Orks. Ebola-chan's prosceline kicked in, and her visual field was overlaid with a floral pattern of pretty colored dots, constantly in motion. The psychedelic didn't disrupt her train of thought and she found the experience to be altogether pleasant.

"Hey, let's go in here," Cady said coyly, tugging on Ebola-chan's sleeve.

'In here' turned out to be a room devoted to chikan. Ebola-chan eyed Cady dubiously, but followed her inside. The room was set up like a series of subway cars, and there were quite a few men in each, pretending to stare at their datapads and occasionally glancing up at the two girls. Cady led her to a standing section and looked pointedly out the window, and Ebola-chan nervously followed her lead. The cars had been programmed to shake, jostle, and rattle as though they were travelling down a real track, and the windows played out scenery from a bucolic city somewhere in the Imperium. The train hit a particularly rough patch of turbulence and Ebola-chan felt herself fall backwards a little, only to have a stiff male member press against her butt. She glanced at Cady, who was pretending to ignore another man slowly brushing against her thigh with his hand.

Well, what was there to lose? Ebola-chan carefully watched the illusory scenery pass by outside the car while the man behind her got more invasive. She pretended not to notice that she was pressed against him for more and more of the time as the subway rattled down the imaginary track. She shifted on her feet, allowing the hand roaming across her ass to have better access to the glistening pink lips underneath. She disregarded Cady's moans, elicited by something the man behind her was doing.

Ebola-chan gasped with surprise as something thick and warm pushed her pussy open and teased the walls apart. So soon! She continued to stare out of the window, not looking back at her 'molester' and not wanting to. No wonder Cady enjoyed the idea. There was something almost agonizingly hot about the anonymity of the sex; of being used by someone she didn't know; of being treated like a nothing more than a receptacle for some obnoxious stranger's waste. Unable to keep her cool, she pushed back into him, and the pair slowly worked up a rhythm so intense it was everything Ebola-chan could do to hold herself upright. The pair of unintroduced lovers ground against one another until her molester came to a sudden, jolting orgasm inside of her.

She breathed hard and struggled to hold herself up, as mingled fluid leaked out of her and dripped down her thigh.

"Nice cosplay, by the way," the man whispered into her ear before vanishing into the crowd who'd gathered around to watch.

Cady was still going to town with the man who'd fallen into her, and Ebola-chan still hadn't come, so she tried to fix her cap and gaze back out of the window of the car, her panties halfway down her thighs and clearly visible. Sure enough, another 'molester' soon replaced the first, and he didn't hesitate for a moment before jamming his rod into her already soaking pussy.

"Oh… ah…" Ebola-chan gasped, unable to hold back her voice.

Cady growled like a tiger, reduced to nothing more than an animal by the fire between her legs. Ebola-chan ruthlessly sought out a similar orgasm from the man pounding her, desperately shifting, trying to get to the sweet spot that would send her into paroxysm of bliss. Finally, with an agonizing grunt, her legs shivered uncontrollably and sent her falling back into the man jabbing between her legs. He came too, and he held her tightly from behind, trying not to spill a drop.

When they were finally sated, Cady and Ebola-chan slowly made their way out of the fake subway and back into the club. They were flushed, sweaty, and entirely content. The pair held hands and made their way through the still-bustling club on their way back to their their auto rickshaw. The driver hurried the pair back to the landing pad in front of the hospital where _Ebola Gay_ awaited their return. They snuck back into Ebola-chan's room and managed to get almost twenty minutes of sleep in each others' arms before Laktheer woke them up, pounding on her door.

[AUTHOR:] Well, I have no idea where this is going. I usually have a plot arc in mind when I start a story or novella, but I have no idea where this is all leading. I guess I'll just let it develop on its own as I continue.

If you're enjoying this ongoing fic, you might also enjoy my Cultist-chan material! You can find it under;

Cultist-chan and the Girls' Night Out

Cultist-chan and the Heart of Darkness

Cultist-chan and the Glorious BolognaTown Groxburger Crusade

Cultist-chan and the Re-re-re-re-re-reëlection of Ronald Reagan

Reviews are the foundation of my motivation, you guys.

Thanks for reading!


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